Review: Matetsi, Zimbabwe

It had long been a dream of mine to visit Victoria Falls — ever since someone mentioned it to me a few weeks ago.  And I can’t go around destroying dreams. I’m in the business of creating them.  But dreams have to start somewhere, and this was the one part of my Zimbabwe trip where I wasn’t quite sure where to stay.  There are several luxury options nearby, but I was assured by the right people that Matetsi was the one.  And the crowd is never wrong.  Right?

Getting there

Matetsi is about an hour’s drive from Victoria Falls Airport — or in my case, an hour in a minibus I had all to myself.  The joys of African logistics.  Apparently, the regular vehicle had broken down, so I suppose I should be grateful they sent anything at all.  The irony wasn’t lost on me: I arrived in a tour bus, and that’s exactly what the place felt like.  Matetsi is not a safari destination, it’s a stopover with delusions of grandeur.  It’s the wrong property in the right place, that has managed to leech off the appeal of Victoria Falls.  It’s like James Corden being the leading man in a Scorsese movie.

Oh, and this is a review, so for completeness, they have a private airstrip about 10 minutes from camp and a helipad that’s practically on the lawn.

Setting

Matetsi is located within a 136,000-acre private concession in northwestern Zimbabwe.  That includes 15 kilometres of private Zambezi River frontage, and it’s along this stretch that Matetsi feels most peaceful.  Sitting outside your room, taking it all in, you almost forget you’re in Matetsi. It’s a wonderful feeling.

It’s a private concession, which I suppose is what you’re paying for—exclusivity, privacy, and the promise of a curated safari experience.  Which, of course, it doesn’t deliver on. But they would make an excellent highway maintenance crew, as the roads across the concession are impressively well-maintained, which is a rarity in Zimbabwe, where most lodges seem to have some racketeering scheme with chiropractors.

Facilities

My first feeling upon stepping inside was joy — joy that you, the reader, are so lucky I’m around and will save you from coming here.  That was swiftly followed by regret.  I should’ve gone to Mpala Jena, but I didn’t want to visit just before their new villas opened and end up having to come back.  Oh, how sweet and innocent I once was.

The main area is oddly bleak—not in a minimalist, intentional way, but in a “we ran out of ideas and just put chairs down” kind of way.  Because the property is so spread out, they’ve created a central, shared zone with most of the facilities.  Yet the two dining areas offer as much hospitality as Leatherface hosting a dinner party just after discovering the Tooth Fairy was a scam.

Almost everything at Matetsi is clustered together near the river: the gym, a small lap pool, two gift shops, and some conference room repurposed into a library.  The spa is a basic tent with two treatment beds.

The gym is tiny — one bike, one elliptical, one treadmill, a few free weights, and a single creaky Technogym strength machine.  The space itself is inexplicably dark, despite facing the pool and river.  Not atmospheric, just dim – like how I felt for coming here.  All the equipment looks like it was purchased just after fire was discovered.  The internet is equally as archaic, with widely variable speeds.  I assume the difference depends on how many people are simultaneously uploading their regrets to OnlyFans.

And then I found out it used to be an andBeyond.  Suddenly, everything made sense.

Room

Matetsi’s 18 suites are split between East and West, but one half was closed for maintenance, which meant I was now a daily migratory species trekking to the main area for meals, activities, and occasional human interaction.  They had warned me it was far.  They did not warn me I’d need resupplies. I’m sure I had to cross the Canadian border to reach my suite, Room 6.

The exterior design vaguely reminded me of Singita Lebombo, but only for about five seconds.  Inside, that comparison falls apart quickly. It’s far more basic.  Forget I said anything, what a terrible comparison.  Forgive me.

You enter into a small sitting area.  Two old, uncomfortable chairs face the river, in a dimly lit space that suggests you go sit on the bed instead — which, of course, is right next to it.  The bathroom is separated by a curtain, with a large standalone bathtub and decent glass windows wrapping around the front, offering views onto the river.  Not quite floor-to-ceiling, but who’s nit picking?  Behind the bed is a small dressing area with little more than two folding luggage racks pretending to be a wardrobe.

Something weird I’ve noticed in Zimbabwe is during this room show around.  They seem to point out every single detail of every single thing that every single moment. It’s like watching my kids try and tell me every single thought that comes into their head.

There’s just something uninspiring about the rooms.  The location is good; everything else fails.  It feels like the bare minimum.

There’s air conditioning and — praise be — a ceiling fan directly above the bed.  This may sound like a minor detail, but it’s astonishing how many lodges position the fan somewhere completely useless, like the entrance hall or Mozambique.  Outside, the deck makes an effort: there’s a plunge pool, a fixed sofa, a lounger, and a dining table — all suggesting this is where you’re meant to spend your time.  Unfortunately, nothing out there is actually comfortable.  Trying to lie down felt like punishment.  I can only assume whoever designed it didn’t own a spine.  A snake?  Yes, let’s go with that.

They claim animals come drink from the plunge pool because they know it’s safe. That’s sweet.  I wouldn’t drink from it myself, but that’s because I’ve tried the food.

As for room locations: Room 17 is uncomfortably close to the main lodge, while mine was absurdly far away.  The solution, I think, is simple — stay at a different hotel.

Food

Lunch was my first foray into the Matesti world of cuisine, where you’re offered four mains to choose from.  I went with the lamb, that was so tough, by the time I finished chewing, it had started growing its wool back.  The next day I tried the chicken, which was drier than a nun’s, shall we say, birth canal?

Dinner offers more choice, with three starters, three mains, and one dessert—meat, fish, or vegetarian.  Occasionally, a waiter would appear beaming with pride, offering a single slice of bread like the last surviving member of its species.

Breakfast looked promising — an extensive à la carte menu, with options like French toast and Turkish eggs.  Then they pronounced brioche as “brioch-ee,” and I immediately retracted all goodwill.  At one point, I waited twenty minutes just for someone to acknowledge me at breakfast.  Not bring food.  Just acknowledge I existed.

The food is not so bad I wouldn’t eat it but not so good I can recommend it. It’s ideal for those of you who have completely given up on yourself.  Like anyone who goes to Taco Bell.

Service

When I checked in, I was asked to share any issues, complaints, or feedback.  I thought it was an odd way to start a stay, asking if I had any complaints.  But it quickly made sense.  It made more than sense; it was sensible.  It was preemptive damage control.

On the one hand: one of the waiters immediately referenced my food preferences, and housekeeping left a lovely handwritten note after running me a bath — complete with just enough pen pressure to confirm it was, in fact, written by a human and not a hotel printer.  The head housekeeper even came by to check in and ask about mosquitoes.  Genuinely kind.

On the other hand: I hate this place.

I would wait and wait for a buggy to take me to my room. I eventually realised that the ten minute walk was a better use of my time, although you’re not allowed to walk at night.

Someone with a clipboard came round each evening to “note down” what I was doing the next day. It felt like checking into a budget group tour.  Someone dropped me off at the wrong place because no one was answering the radio to confirm where I need to be.  I would plan an hour for a simple breakfast — at Singita, they’d already remembered what I had yesterday and had it halfway plated before I sat down.  Here, I would give my order multiple times and then still wait an eternity.

What’s bizarre is that some of the staff are so lovely.  But the place still manages to feel like a slaughterhouse, and you’re the one being slowly processed.  Everything felt like staring at a taxidermist’s first attempt – you can tell there was once life there, but it’s a poor imitation of it.  Everything in Zimbabwe just feels a bit more improvised than elsewhere in Africa.  At one point, a driver spotted me near my room and asked me for directions to the main lodge.  The truly shocking bit wa I actually knew how to get there.

But not everything is awful.  They do serve ice cream besides giraffes at a DIY toppings station, which is actually cool (pun intended).  And strangely, the stay list was well executed.  The welcome setup was solid: good minibar selection, a few chocolate snacks, and a surprisingly comfortable memory foam pillow.  For a brief moment, I was confused — they’d actually done something well.  It was disorienting.

And my guide for Victoria Falls was lovely—and unaffiliated with the lodge, which tells you everything.

Activities

Options include game drives, boating, and fishing — plus a laminated price list of Victoria Falls activities handed to you on arrival, in case you’d like to pay extra to escape.  A guided tour of the Falls with a third-party company was also offered, which I gladly accepted.  It turned out to be the highlight of the stay.  Highly recommended – mostly because it meant not being at the lodge.

They’ve thrown in a few token game drives as if that justifies the price, but it’s like using a wet wipe to clean a human shit before you eat it.  I was lumped in with four other guests for the game drives, making it the first time on the entire trip I had to share a vehicle.  A nine-seater, no less.  It felt cheap.  Because it was cheap.  We had a tracker on game drives — though “tracker” may be a generous term.  He sat perched on the front shouting out animal names like we were in some sort of low-budget safari theme park. “Giraffe!  Zebra!  Impala!  Your mum!” We even stopped for an impala.  I nearly got out and walked.

Every morning began with an uninspiring loop of pickups to collect everyone for the shared vehicle.  By the time we actually started the drive, I had already conceived of one hundred ways to kill myself.

You should never fully judge a property based on a few nights’ stay and what the wildlife is like, but I don’t like this place, so I’ll bend the rules this one time.  This place sucks.

Kids Friendly

Haven’t the children suffered enough?

Where's a better use of your time?

Waterside Lodge

South Africa

4.5/5

Singita Ebony

South Africa

4/5

Singita Boulders

South Africa

4/5

The Good

• The river is nice, I guess.

The Bad

• Everything

The Luxurious

• An hour from Victoria Falls

Conclusion

This was supposed to be the one. Zimbabwe’s finest.  The great hope.  The lodge everyone told me was the best.  And if that’s true, then the rest must be truly shite.  I didn’t just dislike Matetsi — I actively resented it.

You know those places where you arrive and instantly know — know — you won’t like it?  Like your soul starts throttling you, cutting off the last remaining atoms of happiness that might have coursed through your veins. That’s here. It’s not that any one thing was bad. It’s that everything somehow managed to irritate me.  Death by a thousand interactions.  I kept waiting for a redeeming moment.  But this isn’t a romcom; we didn’t fall in love by the third act.  If anything, I was already in the sequel, which they inexplicably turned into a horror movie.

I found myself in a vehicle with other travel agents — all here on a freebie.  I, meanwhile, was paying for this punishment.  I had been duped.  Misery loves company, and thankfully, at least one of them was honest enough to be equally bewildered by the hype.

And then, for the first time in possibly ever, I skipped a game drive.  I couldn’t do it.  I genuinely couldn’t muster the energy to pretend anymore.  Instead, I reverted to the only coping mechanism I have left: passive-aggressively writing about it so that others may be spared.  Or maybe as a trauma response.

At peak season, you’d be paying $4,500 a night.  Luckily, I was only being penalised with a single supplement – the silver lining of having no friends.  They get away with the pricing because they’re near Victoria Falls and you can get here in one flight from Joburg, versus the faff required to reach Mana Pools or Pamushana.  But let me let you into a little secret.

Go to Singita Pamushana instead.  Or Mana.  Or just stay at home.